Coding Illini defeat Team Ohio at SC13!

A team composed of NCSA staff and University of Illinois computer science graduate students defeated Team Ohio in round one of the first ever Intel Parallel Universe Computing Challenge at the SC13 conference in Denver, Nov. 18-21. The Challenge tests knowledge of parallel computing topics and coding skills, with a $25,000 grand prize to be donated to charity.

The Coding Illini are:

• Nikhil Jain: This third-year Computer Science PhD student is interested in network performance and topology aware mapping. He is a member of the Illinois Parallel Programming Laboratory.
• Andriy Kot: A post-doctoral research associate at NCSA, he is involved with Blue Waters Advanced User Support team. Andriy received his Ph.D. In Computer Science in 2011 from the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
• Xiang Ni: Fault tolerance is the research focus of fourth-year computer science PhD student Xiang Ni. She is a member of the Illinois Parallel Programming Laboratory.
• Omar Padron: NCSA research programmer and a member of the Science and Engineering Applications Support (SEAS) team for the Blue Waters petascale computing system. An applied mathematician by training and software developer by trade, Omar’s interests lie in the application of software engineering principles and analytical techniques in the advancement of HPC practice in science.
• Mike Showerman: With skills in clustered computing, systems management, monitoring and analysis, alternative computing architectures and interconnects, team captain Mike Showerman is a formidable foe.

The next match for the Coding Illini will be Thursday at 11 am MT against either The Argonauts (Argonne National Laboratory) or K21¹⁸ (Rice University). The other two teams still in competition are Gaussian Elimination Squad (Germany) and Seoul National University. Face-offs take place live in Intel’s exhibit booth, #2701, and are moderated by Mike Bernhardt, publisher of The Exascale Report.

Follow NCSA on Twitter (@NCSAatIllinois), Facebook (NCSAatIllinois), and Instagram (NCSAatIllinois) and look for the hashtag #codingillini for more information.

Disclaimer: Due to changes in website systems, we've adjusted archived content to fit the present-day site and the articles will not appear in their original published format. Formatting, header information, photographs and other illustrations are not available in archived articles.